Countdown to Christmas: Day 17 – Nominate your IC Hero

Do you know an IC Hero? Now is the time to have their hard work recognised. Today’s guest post will tell you how.

It’s Day 17 in my Countdown to Christmas series and Jenni Field, Chair of CIPR Inside (pictured), is here to tell us how to celebrate success and spread the season of goodwill to all communicators. Over to you Jenni…

November was all about the #insidestory awards. Lots of super entries have been received and they’re now being perused and assessed by our panel of expert judges.

Well done and thank you to all of you IC heroes who have entered.

However, there was one category that you were all either a bit too shy to try for, or perhaps too busy doing the day job and being brilliant to take time to enter. The Clare Latham award, our very special award to recognise outstanding individual contribution to Internal Communication was not entered by anyone this year.

This is a first for us. We were disappointed because it’s a really special award, in memory of a brilliant communicator, Clare Latham who passed away in June 2014, and her colleagues at scarlettabbott worked with us to create the award in her memory.

We’ve been giving this award some serious thought, we’ve talked to our partners at scarlettabbott and we’ve put our heads together to make a plan that we believe will work for our community of internal communicators.

We think you’re all probably a bit like we are: busy; like to get on with your jobs; and don’t always shout about the great work that you do or hold it up as ‘award-winning’.

But actually, we think that plenty of you and the people you work with should be award winners, and we know that winning awards is a great way to show our bosses just how good we are at our jobs.

So we’re determined to make this award category work for you and the profession.

So here’s the plan.

This is your chance to show someone you know who works in internal communication just how good you think they are, give them some recognition for their work, and a great way to see out 2015 and begin 2016 with some public recognition, appreciation and respect.

We’ve made it quick, simple and free to nominate anyone who you believe deserves this award. You can’t nominate any previous winners though, as that wouldn’t be fair.

We want you to nominate someone you have worked with, or who has tutored you, coached you and helped you, someone who has written a book you’ve read that’s influenced you, or provided you with lots of inspiration… Someone who you think has made a great contribution to internal comms.

It’s free to nominate anyone, so quick do it now before the Christmas break, send an email with a few words and that’s it. See the process below to nominate your IC heroes.

At least one of the below to enable CIPR Inside to make contact: Email address / LinkedIn profile / Twitter link.

Write between 100 and 150 words to explain why you have nominated them. Tell CIPR Inside why you think they have made an outstanding contribution to internal communication.

And that’s it for your part in this stage of the process.

Judging

Next CIPR Inside will contact each of the nominees, let them know they have been nominated, and ask them a few short questions.

They will create a shortlist from the nominations by sharing this information with the judging panel and getting their assessments on the answers to the questions.

Then they’ll go to a public vote.

Voting

CIPR Inside will use their answers and all or part of your nomination to share with the world of IC and get everyone voting. That will be your chance to support your colleagues / friends and community more by helping to spread the word and get the votes in for your nominees.

Timeline

Nominations to be submitted by 6pm on Friday 8 January 2016.

Once nominations close, CIPR Inside will contact nominees to ask them to answer some simple questions to enable voters to make a choice.

They’ll assess those answers and nominations with the judges to create a shortlist down to a voting list

Voting will commence at the end of January to coincide with publishing the shortlist for all the other entries.

Shortlisted nominees in the voting process will receive a free ticket for the awards party on 25 February, where they will find out who is the winner and who will come away highly commended.

So, what are you waiting for, make someone’s year, nominate them for the 2016 Clare Latham Award for Outstanding Contribution to Internal Communication.